In this episode of Cascading Leadership, Dr. Jim welcomes Ali Al Jabry, the founder of Kwema, to discuss the most important thing to consider as a founder of a startup and why building lifelong relationships is critical to startup success.
Ali explains that he is Kenyan and Saudi and has lived in five different continents, mainly the Middle East and Africa, for about 10 years.He provides insight into why having strong relationships is essential for success and emphasizes that the US isn’t as safe as some may think.
Ali highlights the importance of understanding the local market and culture in order to succeed. He advises that founders should be patient and persistent in order to succeed. He emphasizes the importance of understanding the local market, the local culture and the need to build relationships with people who have a good understanding of the region. Finally, he advises founders to always be learning and to stay current.
Ali is a tech founder motivated by his experience in two very different worlds, the Middle East and Kenya. He and his co-founders came up with the idea of Kwema, after one of their network friends was kidnapped on her way from the airport to her house. Through his journey with Kwema Ali has learned about safety and security, having lived all over Latin America and the US.
Kwema, a safety technology company that has developed a badge reel device with a hidden panic button. When pressed, it notifies a user's security team, corporate security team, emergency management team, or 911 of their situation. He shared his story of how the company evolved from an idea that was sparked from an experience of being in a dangerous situation.
Ali has lived in many places throughout his life - this has allowed him to talk to people about their safety and has opened his eyes to the need for safety technology. He has received a lot of traction for Kwema in different industries in the US. Ali's story of innovation is rooted in a terrifying experience, .
His immigrant background has helped him stay open minded and venture out of his own community. He believes in investing in cultures and being as local as possible.
Timestamps
00:00:00
Exploring Innovative Leadership and Disruptive Strategies
00:05:00
Exploring the Impact of a Global Life Experience
00:10:58
Professional Growth and Ambition
00:15:50
Lessons Learned from Winning a Startup Competition
00:25:36
"Exploring the Challenges of Launching a Hardware Product
00:34:21
Exploring Solutions to Workplace Violence
00:38:49
Conversation on Building Relationships and Putting People First in Business
00:47:27
Exploring Solutions to Healthcare System Challenges
Music Credit: Music Credit: Maarten Schellekens - Riviera
Follow us at:
www.cascadingleadership.com
linkedin.com/in/drjimk
linkedin.com/in/1lawrenceobrown
In this episode of Cascading Leadership, Dr. Jim welcomes Ali Al Jabry, the founder of Kwema, to discuss the most important thing to consider as a founder of a startup and why building lifelong relationships is critical to startup success.
Ali explains that he is Kenyan and Saudi and has lived in five different continents, mainly the Middle East and Africa, for about 10 years.He provides insight into why having strong relationships is essential for success and emphasizes that the US isn’t as safe as some may think.
Ali highlights the importance of understanding the local market and culture in order to succeed. He advises that founders should be patient and persistent in order to succeed. He emphasizes the importance of understanding the local market, the local culture and the need to build relationships with people who have a good understanding of the region. Finally, he advises founders to always be learning and to stay current.
Ali is a tech founder motivated by his experience in two very different worlds, the Middle East and Kenya. He and his co-founders came up with the idea of Kwema, after one of their network friends was kidnapped on her way from the airport to her house. Through his journey with Kwema Ali has learned about safety and security, having lived all over Latin America and the US.
Kwema, a safety technology company that has developed a badge reel device with a hidden panic button. When pressed, it notifies a user's security team, corporate security team, emergency management team, or 911 of their situation. He shared his story of how the company evolved from an idea that was sparked from an experience of being in a dangerous situation.
Ali has lived in many places throughout his life - this has allowed him to talk to people about their safety and has opened his eyes to the need for safety technology. He has received a lot of traction for Kwema in different industries in the US. Ali's story of innovation is rooted in a terrifying experience, .
His immigrant background has helped him stay open minded and venture out of his own community. He believes in investing in cultures and being as local as possible.
Timestamps
00:00:00
Exploring Innovative Leadership and Disruptive Strategies
00:05:00
Exploring the Impact of a Global Life Experience
00:10:58
Professional Growth and Ambition
00:15:50
Lessons Learned from Winning a Startup Competition
00:25:36
"Exploring the Challenges of Launching a Hardware Product
00:34:21
Exploring Solutions to Workplace Violence
00:38:49
Conversation on Building Relationships and Putting People First in Business
00:47:27
Exploring Solutions to Healthcare System Challenges
Music Credit: Music Credit: Maarten Schellekens - Riviera
Follow us at:
www.cascadingleadership.com
linkedin.com/in/drjimk
linkedin.com/in/1lawrenceobrown
Ali Al Jabry
[00:00:00] Dr. Jim: welcome to today's episode of Cascading Leadership. I am your friendly neighborhood talent strategy nerd, Dr. Jim. And today we have another episode in our Innovators and Disruptors series. And in this episode we're gonna learn a lot of great stuff. We're gonna learn what is the most important thing to consider as a founder of a startup?
[00:00:21] Dr. Jim: We're gonna learn why building lifelong relationships is critical to startup success. And we're also gonna learn how the US isn't as safe as we think it is. And the person that's gonna guide us through this journey we have is the founder of Kuma Ali Jabri. And before we get to Ali, I wanna call a couple of things.
[00:00:43] Dr. Jim: So for those of you who are watching on YouTube or whatever platform that you might be seeing this on, perhaps it's TikTok. You might notice that I'm not in my normal get up. Usually I'm in a button down shirt and a blazer. Today I'm not. I am drinking a Red Bull [00:01:00] wearing my Red Bull, New York, jersey, and that's by design because I just took inventory recently of how many clips I have of excerpts from the podcast where I am drinking a red Bull while a while the guest is speaking.
[00:01:15] Dr. Jim: And it's a lot. And I'm looking at, Hey Red Bull, you have a phenomenal opportunity to get some sponsorship on this show. We have sponsor spots open, so I figured I'd throw that out there and and see what happens. So with all of those shenanigans out of the way, Ali, awesome to have you on the show.
[00:01:33] Ali Al Jabry: It's a pleasure. Thanks
[00:01:34] Ali Al Jabry: for having me. Yeah.
[00:01:35] Dr. Jim: I
[00:01:35] Dr. Jim: know that we're gonna cover a lot of ground and before we dive into that conversation, I think I think a good place for us to get grounded is for you to get the listeners and viewers to the show up to speed on who you are, what you're involved wi with, what Kwema actually does.
[00:01:56] Ali Al Jabry: Sure thing. Yeah. My name's Ali Jabry I'm Kenya and [00:02:00] Saudi. I grew up living in like the five different continents. Mainly the Middle East and Africa. Spent about a good 10 years in Latin America, and now I live in the us. I've been a tech founder for about 11 years now, and always had a passion for solving problems like growing up in two completely different worlds like the Middle East, where it was a lot of.
[00:02:19] Ali Al Jabry: Abundance of pretty much all that you can think of than going to Kenya. And there's a really strict line of poverty. And seeing that and being, seeing both sides of the coin every year really like blew, made my mind indirectly fall in love with solving world problems. Without even noticing it.
[00:02:39] Ali Al Jabry: You So when I moved to Latin America, it was a really different experience, and that's where the segue into how Kema was founded, came to life. I had other co-founders at the time and somebody that we had in our network was kidnapped, unfortunately on the way from the airport to her house.
[00:02:54] Ali Al Jabry: On her way home. She had asked her before she went in the cab, she asked her mom to wait for her home with cab money. And her [00:03:00] mom never saw her. So she's what happened? Something's wrong. My daughter doesn't have money to pay for the cab. And started asking around and became viral. And in about 30 hours later, because of the virality, the kidnappers got scared and let her go.
[00:03:11] Ali Al Jabry: And that was wow, what if we could replicate this by creating some magic button? And that's how me and my ex co-founders at the time came up with the idea. But here I am. I'm the one that stuck around till today and. It's been a insane journey of learning about safety and security.
[00:03:26] Ali Al Jabry: I've lived all over Latin America. I've lived all over the us was in Alaska, then was in St. Louis, and that's where I'm right now in Missouri and was in California, Miami, Mexico City, Rio. So I got to talk to a lot of people about their safety and it shocked my mind to see how dangerous environments can be for people.
[00:03:44] Ali Al Jabry: And that's where Kwema evolved from being a piece of accessory that anybody wears. Like jewelry has a hidden panic button when you press it, it, no, it notifies your security de like your friends and family that you're in danger. And then within that journey we evolved to what we have today, which is a badge reel that [00:04:00] everybody wears.
[00:04:00] Ali Al Jabry: We actually have a patent and we're a pending in 50 other countries, so everybody already wears this. So it's very easy to add a seamless layer of safety. So when you press it with your name tag, it automatically would sync with your sec, your security team, like your corporate security team or your.
[00:04:13] Ali Al Jabry: Emergency management team, or 9 1 1 if you're like a remote worker or like an on the ground salesperson. And we're getting a lot of traction within different industries in the us And yeah, that's a nutshell what comment does in a brief control about me.
[00:04:26] Dr. Jim: I'm impressed that you just got all of that content out in a couple of minutes, so that's a, that's pretty amazing. But I think what really took me aback in what you described is how the seed of innovation. Started from a really, terrifying crisis event. And we're gonna touch on, the roots of all of that stuff a little bit later, but I wanna call that out right now.
[00:04:48] Dr. Jim: One of the interesting things about the rest of the in your background that you shared with us is the number of places that you've lived throughout your life. You're Kenyan, Saudi you have an immigrant [00:05:00] background, and then you've lived all over the world. So when you look at that global experience and that global life experience, how did that impact you?
[00:05:08] Ali Al Jabry: I think what it did is really made me put zero boundaries on people's ethnicity culture, and always want to be part of those specific cultures. So growing up my classroom was like the un, like I had people from all over the world and from a young age having that kind of exposure and then having the guts to travel when you're like 19 to a completely different content where you don't speak the language is pretty much not common, right?
[00:05:34] Ali Al Jabry: So the, I think the fact that I was bold enough to take these cultural jumps or immersion opportunities and knowing that's gonna be so risky and so hard, I might fail drastically. That made me want to solve problems like they're my own, even though there might not be a hundred percent my own, if that makes sense.
[00:05:54] Ali Al Jabry: And. It really invested in my North Star, [00:06:00] right? I love investing in cultures. I love being as local as possible. Everywhere I go, I love understanding what the problems are. I love helping people, whether it's through conversation, whether it's through action. It's just the way that my, like my thread is designed.
[00:06:15] Dr. Jim: That's some pretty solid input and insight. It actually got me thinking. So you have a pretty diverse immigrant background and. Generally I don't wanna paint with a broad brush, but there's a fairly solid stream of any immigrant community where children of immigrants are told, you need to stay within your own community and don't venture too much out Yeah.
[00:06:37] Dr. Jim: Out out of your community. And here you are as a 19 year old traveling all over the world and you continue to do that. Did you catch any flack from your relatives
[00:06:47] Ali Al Jabry: I definitely didn't face like any slack from my parents, but I did, or my family, but I. , like got questions like, are you crazy? Why are you going to Chile? What is there, like what wasn't Chile like? My sisters went to the [00:07:00] us like, why don't you go to the US and oh, actually you know what?
[00:07:02] Ali Al Jabry: I wanna go to Chile. It sounds exciting. Maybe I was also young and naive when something a bit more exotic or crazy or fun or unique, but it was probably the best decision I ever made. Like it, it made me. A critical thinker, somebody who takes risk is, has, is very comfortable with the unknown, right?
[00:07:18] Ali Al Jabry: I was living in the unknown since I was a young age, the age of 19 in Chile, in a place where 2% of the population spoke English. So these are all things that made me a diamond in the rough, but definitely was like, what really? So definitely got a lot of those, but never got oh, you should not do that.
[00:07:33] Ali Al Jabry: So it was I've been like privileged to have like great support from my parents.
[00:07:37] Dr. Jim: So were your parents fairly cosmopolitan and travel around a lot too?
[00:07:41] Ali Al Jabry: My parents were definitely open-minded and traveled a lot and at the very least, knew a lot about culture and were very well educated when it comes to cultural differences and also knowing how things work. My, my dad and mom at a young age traveled to a lot of different parts of the Europe and the us, and they're both have very positive [00:08:00] personalities. So that's what helped me be the person I am today.
[00:08:02] Dr. Jim: So you you head off to Chile when you were 19. What did, how did that Chilean experience shape sort of the rest of your, journey into adulthood?
[00:08:13] Ali Al Jabry: Yeah. What's funny is that I, one of the, this is stupid of me, but funny, when I was young, the reason I wanted to go to Chile is cuz I wanted to conquer a mountain without having a support system. Without having anybody there, right? So like I was thinking if I go to the US I'll have my uncles there, I'll have some other family members there who would actually pave the path for me and make it easy, right?
[00:08:34] Ali Al Jabry: And as much as that was attractive, I still felt what if I go to Chile and like I'm the man, right? That sounds exciting. That sounds like a challenge I want to take. And I was thinking of it like more I'm gonna go and learn Spanish. I'm gonna go and build a life of my own there. And when I got there, I realized that.
[00:08:51] Ali Al Jabry: I was unique, like very unique in Chile. This was thousand eight. There was no like very little foreigners, let alone like dark-skinned or people of [00:09:00] color. So everybody saw me. I was like shocked that, hey, like that's a black guy. Wow. Like it was so interesting. It was a curiosity that was obviously not racist, but just a curiosity that was existent.
[00:09:08] Ali Al Jabry: And for me, because I already grew up speaking English, Arabic, and Swahili, like picking up Spanish was a bit easier cuz I had all the pronunciations on Locke and I just had to practice. So here I am, 19 year old Ali like taking classes, like learning, watching shows, like going out, meeting people, trying to converse with really bad Spanish.
[00:09:29] Ali Al Jabry: And six months later ish, like I was already speaking, very manageable Spanish and then started having more confidence because I was like, wow, I'm speaking four languages now. And started reaching out to people for like work while I was studying and. ended up getting so many meetings cause people were just curious to meet me even though they didn't have a job for me or didn't even have anything to offer me.
[00:09:47] Ali Al Jabry: They're just like, Hey, sorry we don't have any open any positions open right now, but I'd love to buy you coffee. Do you wanna meet up and love to learn? Meet at Kenyon and Chile, like your background's. So interesting. So that gave me confidence to realize that, hey, maybe I don't have to like, be so [00:10:00] transactional about what I need.
[00:10:01] Ali Al Jabry: Maybe I should just reach out and be like, Hey, we'd love to meet and talk. So that kind of segued me into being very I don't wanna say picky, but very diligent about what I wanted to embark and. It ended up making me ju jump from jobs like every three to four months because I got a better offer.
[00:10:18] Ali Al Jabry: And I just was like, it's a better offer. It sounds like a more exciting op opportunity going after it. Like I was never satisfied almost. And that's what led the segue path into what brought my eyes and my life to what the startup world was. I didn't even know what the word startup was till about 2011.
[00:10:33] Ali Al Jabry: And that was thanks to Startup Chile, which was a federal government program that brings about 60 entrepreneurs from across the world to fund their startups with 40 or $50,000. And they have to spend six months in Chile and. I applied to that and got in, and I remember I was at work when I got it and I just got up and I was like, yeah, and I was doing like a sales job, so I jumped outta my sales.
[00:10:51] Ali Al Jabry: Yeah. I'm like, oh, you closed the deal. I was like actually no . I'll celebrate for something else. And then the resignation later, a week later, and the rest is history.
[00:10:58] Dr. Jim: The one thing that I've been [00:11:00] grinning about since you mentioned it is, when you're young and you're thinking about, oh, I'm gonna do something different.
[00:11:05] Dr. Jim: I totally connected with your whole idea of there's the path that, my predecessors have paved for me, and I could take that path where I could go do something different. Now, when most people think about, I'm gonna do something different than what my parents did, they think about a different pro profession.
[00:11:20] Dr. Jim: Oh, my parents are lawyers, so I'm gonna be a doctor, or I'm gonna be a teacher, or something like that. You, on the other hand, Oh everybody else has done their own thing and paved their way, and I could certainly follow their footsteps and do that, but I'm gonna make it really difficult on myself and just go to another country and see if I can go there with no support structure.
[00:11:36] Dr. Jim: Yeah, everybody has their has their idea of adventure. I guess yours is a little different than mine. But that's that that's pretty good pretty good story there. The other thing that was interesting about what you just mentioned and I want you to say a little bit more about this, was that once you started getting into the rhythm of professional life you would be constantly presented with, better opportunities and you would jump at [00:12:00] them.
[00:12:00] Dr. Jim: That's actually a new school mentality and I absolutely like that mentality versus, my Gen X and older generations mentality of basically you need to stay wherever you're at for as long as you can. Tell us a little bit about why that eagerness to jump or how that eagerness to jump was developed.
[00:12:20] Ali Al Jabry: I think it was because I realized I'm not really good with conforming in closed confinements.
[00:12:26] Ali Al Jabry: So I'm very ambitious. I'm very like, Aggressive and I like to push the boundaries as much as I can, right? Until I'm like, Hey, this is as far as you can go. And I'm like, why is that again, can you explain, can I learn more? Even when I'm selling, I always ask questions like that.
[00:12:43] Ali Al Jabry: I'm not even like selling per se, I'm just asking is this, can you and what would change what it would have to change for that to work? You know what I mean? So it's just the way I was, I grew up, and it's the street smarts, it's the good sportsmanship, right? Like it's just in my blood.
[00:12:56] Ali Al Jabry: Cuz like in Kenya, that's how most Kenyans are. That's why they have the Kenyans are known to [00:13:00] have this like acumen about dealing with people. Like when you're buying something, you're bartering, right? That Barger culture just made me naturally question and question when people would just stand in line, right?
[00:13:11] Ali Al Jabry: So I think I quickly managed to break. Societal barrier that existed in Chile, which was more conformists. While I was more Why not? Why not? Why not, right? And here I was getting people throwing, giving me lifelines like, Hey, I would actually like to hire you. It's it would be so cool to work with you.
[00:13:30] Ali Al Jabry: And I as a kid who was like young and taken on the world, living in this feeling at the top of his career, right? Feeling so excited about all the opportunities coming to me in Chile, feeling like at home in Chile, feeling welcomed, feeling like overwhelmed by the group of circles I had, the group of circles I built, how different all these circles of groups were.
[00:13:48] Ali Al Jabry: And like all these things, on my 21st birthday, I had 260 people on my birthday party, right? And I was like, two years into living in Chile, people who as old as like 37, 2. I was young as 19 or [00:14:00] 20, right? So it's, it was crazy just being that young with that much. Exposure to age difference experience to like people who were movers and shakers.
[00:14:08] Dr. Jim: One of the things that stands out about what you just said and I don't remember the person that had this quote, but the quote, and I'm paraphrasing, is along the lines of All progress relies on the unreasonable man. All progress relies on the unreasonable man on not accepting the world as it is.
[00:14:28] Dr. Jim: So I'm like butchering the quote. But you get, progress relies on people that actually say why does it have to be this way? Why do we have to do it this way? Why can't we do it a different way? And that really connects with me because I, as on my end, I'm wired similarly where.
[00:14:45] Dr. Jim: I ask a lot of questions just in general. A lot of people might find that annoying. But, I'm always trying to figure out, okay, is there a better way? What's the reasoning behind doing this? And, what would be wrong if we took this other path and would this other path be actually a better [00:15:00] option than what we're doing?
[00:15:00] Dr. Jim: And that's why I've always fit in really well in startup and accelerating growth cultures in large organizations where it's stay in your lane. I struggle man. It's tough. Like I'm not a tight operations person. I can't get into the minutiae because I'm like a big picture person.
[00:15:19] Dr. Jim: We're here, we wanna get over there. And for those that are listening, I'm pointing in two different directions. I don't need somebody to map it out that way. I just need to get over there. So let's figure that out. How can we get from here to there as fast as we can? Let's start doing it and doing it fast.
[00:15:35] Dr. Jim: So I really connected with what you said. I wanna fast forward to you winning the startup competition. And not just winning it, when you actually got a chance to execute it. What were the big lessons that you learned from going through that experience?
[00:15:50] Ali Al Jabry: Crazy is good. , that's like the most, maybe that's the first thing I would say. Because the crazier your thought could be, the more[00:16:00] likely it comes from a place of passion. And passion is everything, right? So my, the first company I founded was an education-based startup that was a tablet-based learning system.
[00:16:11] Ali Al Jabry: And that. , as crazy as it sounded, it was right when the you said you have a background from India. When the Akosh tablet came out, which was like a $30 low-cost tablet, this was about 12 years ago, right? Yep. Yep. Like I was thinking I was gonna be a game changer for schools and for democratizing education, so I jumped at the opportunity to create this learning platform that worked on tablets and didn't require internet.
[00:16:33] Ali Al Jabry: That was the goal. That was the mission. And started off way ahead of time, right? Like tablets were just coming out, the iPad just came out, like Samsung started coming the first tablets and then the Kosh came out and I was like, that's exactly what we need. That's exactly what education needs.
[00:16:46] Ali Al Jabry: Especially because I grew up in a really high end school in Saudi Arabia. My friends had everything and my Saudi friends like threw away the iPads they didn't care about. While when I went to Kenya every year, I got sick, like kids studying on the street like to just pass their grades, and [00:17:00] to get their grades done.
[00:17:01] Ali Al Jabry: So like it really impregnated something in my head that never let go of my vivid vision. And when I saw that, I just quickly clicked what if we just did this? Al could stand behind that mission and I quickly found people to join me. That journey. So I think the craziness of a whim and then listen to your gut mixed with passion is exactly like the recipes you need to get something off the ground.
[00:17:24] Ali Al Jabry: And that's what happened when Startup Chili like funded, accepted us as one of the companies that cohort year. And I was so devoted, like immediately, like that same moment, I knew I'm quitting if not in a week like tomorrow. And I'm doing this full-time now.
[00:17:38] Dr. Jim: That sounds like a great concept.
[00:17:40] Dr. Jim: What happened once you started on the execution side?
[00:17:42] Ali Al Jabry: It was my first startup. like experience with tech. I never like really dealt with tech, so I made a lot of mistakes. But I would say we had some decent market penetration. We ended up partnering with like big tablet manufacturers like Samsung, huawe, Brightstar, and they would actually get all our leads for us because we were still cutting [00:18:00] edge at the time where our software worked, obviously for Android tablets, cuz we were going for a digital divide mix.
[00:18:06] Ali Al Jabry: And it, it took off really quickly. Thanks those partnerships. But I quickly realized that it's a very tough industry like education selling to schools or te tertiary education or technical education or universities. It's such a long sales cycle, it's probably one of the hardest markets to break into.
[00:18:24] Ali Al Jabry: And back then, like startups were like, Were seen as no, we don't deal with companies as young. Yeah. So there's such an anti startup culture, especially in America, right? In the US I'd say probably similar, but maybe in California in specific areas. It wasn't like that. But this is 2000 11, 12, 13, right?
[00:18:41] Ali Al Jabry: 14. Like startups weren't as one as the biggest thing as they are now. So it, it ended up like crushing us because of how, like how much the juggernauts had a, like a foothold on these markets, how much there was some corruption existing, like it was just a lot of different things. We still ended up doing fairly okay, but we never sold the [00:19:00] company.
[00:19:00] Ali Al Jabry: We just ended up calling it quits cuz it was just too much work. And we made so many mistakes. We were so in deep. It just, it was very hard to quit, but we just said, you know what? Let's just regroup and find a different thing to
[00:19:10] Dr. Jim: When I think about it as as you're telling the story, it's a great product, but the niche you're selling into has a lot of front loaded.
[00:19:19] Dr. Jim: Headwinds that you had to deal with because I've sold into education before and it's not my primary industry that I'd wanna sell to because there's so much bureaucracy that you have to go through. Then there's the budget constraints that you have to go through. There's the constant push to discount even when you're selling on, on, on razor thin margins to meet the market.
[00:19:41] Dr. Jim: So I totally get your experience selling into education at any level.
[00:19:45] Ali Al Jabry: But just to throw some fun metrics though, we had a school in Bolivia that had a thousand students all using tablets on a two megabyte bandwidth and internet connection. Oh, wow. Yeah, so we, we did really well with the low [00:20:00] bandwidth environments.
[00:20:01] Ali Al Jabry: Yeah. So that was really our, so we had a huge social impact measurements, so that was my North star, but it just didn't, it didn't pan out as, as fast or as well as I wanted it to. And it was becoming very expensive .
[00:20:11] Dr. Jim: It's really interesting to me that more word didn't get out because when I think about the proportion of the world that grows, With educational infrastructure in the, in, in place.
[00:20:23] Dr. Jim: Very small. Yeah. And you look at the population that doesn't have the infrastructure and you're providing, know, knowledge and learning and education is the great equalizer. Yeah. And I think from your background and my background, like my parents beat it into my head that you better, the reason why we're leaving India to go to the US is so you have a better life.
[00:20:41] Dr. Jim: Yeah. And education is that pathway. So I'm intrigued that it didn't get bigger reach and really didn't blow up, but I get, the circumstances behind it. You went through that entire cycle and one of the things that we talked about in the beginning of the show is, when you look at being a startup founder, at what point [00:21:00] did you figure out what the most important Lesson or focus needs to be a successful founder.
[00:21:05] Dr. Jim: Where did that come into play in terms of that learning? Because it, it looks like you, it sounds like you took a lot of lumps in that first effort.
[00:21:13] Ali Al Jabry: That's a really good point to bring up. I would say with my, with the first company, like I was extremely focused on results and transactions and traction and growth, which are important things to focus on, don't get me wrong. But the core recipe for success right now, in my opinion, is all about.
[00:21:35] Ali Al Jabry: Relationships. It's all about stakeholders. It's all about listening. It's all about falling in love, obsessively with the problem you're solving and only focusing on being the best of that problem. Be the expert at the table of what that problem is By evidence. And evidence doesn't mean it's like a book you're reading.
[00:21:54] Ali Al Jabry: It means that you've talked to as many people who are your stakeholder and benefic beneficiaries and [00:22:00] understand live, breathe, and have a visual memory of what's the problem they have is. And that's where I feel I've invested so selflessly with Kwema and with my personality in general too.
[00:22:15] Ali Al Jabry: Like with other things too. So that's, that allows to be so empathetic, but also, Put my feet in people's shoes very, in a very like drastic manner.
[00:22:25] Dr. Jim: So that is something phenomenal. And you saw me grinning as you were saying it, because I've had a lot of startup founders on the show, and they ostensibly say very similar things.
[00:22:37] Dr. Jim: I started out focusing on the product and trying to make the best product possible. It wasn't until I made the switch into being obsessed about the problem that I really accelerated my learning as a founder and also the products acceleration into the marketplace. So that was really important.
[00:22:55] Dr. Jim: But the reason why I was grinning is I've been a sales guy forever [00:23:00] and I've run teams and this is a conversation that I've been having for a decade. Stop talking about who you are, what you do. Your company, your features and benefits. Nobody cares about. Any of that stuff.
[00:23:11] Dr. Jim: Doesn't matter. You don't matter. You need to be obsessed about the problem that you solve for the customer. So you need to understand the customer problem first. If you want any hope of selling anything, unless you're in the market for tacos, because everybody wants tacos. Do not talk about product. Do not talk about yourself, talk about the problem, start asking about the problem, and keep digging until you actually mapped that out.
[00:23:37] Dr. Jim: So that's why I was I was grinning when you were talking about that. So you referenced this earlier in the, in, in the show and there was a critical event that happened that started you on the road for on the road to build Kuma and that was the kidnapping. What were the circumstances behind that and then how that started the seed of the idea?
[00:23:59] Ali Al Jabry: Yeah. I [00:24:00] was living in Chile at the moment at that, when that happened, and this person was in Bolivia and it was just so viral that Facebook, Twitter, was all flooded with the sharing of this news this girl getting kidnapped.
[00:24:13] Ali Al Jabry: And it, it just made sense, but it was a venture that I wasn't, we weren't gonna do without funding. So we were like, okay this is a great idea. We have to create a hardware product. Wow. Like we barely did miracles with the software product. How are we gonna create a hardware product? Coming up with the.
[00:24:33] Ali Al Jabry: The designed idea of what kind of jewelry, like what would people wear, all this kind of stuff just to create a very basic concept, and started applying for like different accelerators and that's when we got funding from a program in Alaska and it just so happened to be that Alaska had one of the most dangerous stats for women.
[00:24:48] Ali Al Jabry: Then, so cuz of darkness, like the alcohol views, like it just had a huge reason for domestic violence and just sexual violence in general. So we were thinking Alaska would be a good place for us to do more [00:25:00] market research, talk to more women and see how we can launch this product that is a jewelry piece specifically for gender-based violence, right?
[00:25:07] Ali Al Jabry: That could notify like a safety community of people close to you. And we were targeting schools, like universities, right? Like college campuses where we could build a safety community of, I don't know, like hundred people who could help each other. So when you press a button, you get like a proximity-based alert that says, hey this person's in danger and is really close to you.
[00:25:23] Ali Al Jabry: Can you just try and help? So that's kinda the stuff that we're trying to build. It was crazy because we got so much like scary feedback about the vigilante issue and all these different use, like potential errors or issues. But we normally got a a lot of support.
[00:25:36] Dr. Jim: It's interesting that you describe the vigilante objection. That seems like a really edge case. Objection. When you think about the greater good that would be done by having a wearable that attracts or, or alerts anybody in a security capacity of you being in danger, that seems like an odd
[00:25:55] Ali Al Jabry: but was alerting anybody in general, wasn't just a security capacity, was alerting anybody who wanted to [00:26:00] be like a part of the safety community. So it could be like, You know what I mean? And Alaska's big on guns, right? So it was, somebody was telling me like, Hey I'm like one, one person.
[00:26:07] Ali Al Jabry: One, one. I think college student was like, Hey, if somebody's like attacking my sister, like I have a gun, , I'm going in there and messing somebody up, right? So I was like okay. We gotta worry about that now.
[00:26:16] Dr. Jim: I wasn't thinking in terms of who the audience is.
[00:26:19] Dr. Jim: I'm thinking it's you have a wearable, it alerts the authorities and whoever the authorities are, they come, it's actually within your entire your close-knit community. You hinted at this when the product concept came to mind, it's like, Hey, we had our own challenges when it came to software and now we're thinking about doing a hardware product. What are some of the challenges that you had to contend with when you were designing and launching a hardware product that you didn't consider when you were doing software .
[00:26:45] Ali Al Jabry: It takes so much longer, like it takes way much longer to launch a hardware product than it would ever take to launch a software product. You can't really get real validation until you have an actual, looks like, feels like product [00:27:00] prototype. And even then you can't deem it success until users actually wear an user product.
[00:27:05] Ali Al Jabry: And that's probably the hardest thing to achieve. Luckily, like we launched in Mexico City about two years after, about two years after funding, after founding the company. And I had the, like the luxury of Mexico is a very cash heavy economy. Like people don't use cards, nobody has credit cards.
[00:27:24] Ali Al Jabry: So nobody buys online. Like e-commerce is like almost in existent in Mexico back then. At least now it's better. Anyhow, we would do crazy with Facebook ads and have a thousand engagement points. Like it was really viral just because of the endangers insecurity that women face in Mexico.
[00:27:38] Ali Al Jabry: And we had people coming to our offices in Mexico City just to see the product and end up leaving with three or four bracelets. And we were like, what? So it was such a good experience for me to be able to talk like, why are you so interested? What, where would you use it? And then we started learning a lot about the user and I was the one that was talking to them and asked them, why why do you wanna buy it?
[00:27:56] Ali Al Jabry: Like instead of being like, okay, here's a product, thank you so much. I was like, [00:28:00] okay, I'm happy to sell you that, but what was, what's the reason you're interested in buying it? And stuff like that, which really helped our growth. But before, until that second year, like we didn't really, we couldn't really validate much.
[00:28:11] Ali Al Jabry: We did some pre-orders, but pre-orders were too risky for us because there was other companies trying to do like small wearables and all these different things that colossally failed, right? They raised Maybe they did a $200,000 Kickstarter campaign and then went to fund, like they could not come with a product.
[00:28:26] Ali Al Jabry: They got sued through the Wazo. So we were like, yeah, we don't wanna do that. I would rather like maybe do a small test if we can sell $10,000 worth or dollars worth, and then just focus on creating the product. I think that's better strategy. That's what we did, right? So it allowed us to validate our product early, but at the same time, it wasn't real validation.
[00:28:44] Dr. Jim: There's another thing that's pretty interesting about what you just described is that you're asking, you're doing your customer research at the point of sale.
[00:28:53] Dr. Jim: And the reason why it latched down to this is that, in sales there, there's always this pushback between [00:29:00] sales and marketing and I don't know why it exists. Sales is always talking about marketing sends us crap leads, and then marketing's always talking about sales can't really close anything close
[00:29:09] Dr. Jim: Yeah. And I, I've never understood that relationship especially when considering the amount of sales uh, revenue organizations that build these personas about what somebody is gonna be interested in doing and why they buy without ever talking to the customer. Yeah. Like when, whenever you're, I'm thinking about, Hey, I wanna launch a new product.
[00:29:29] Dr. Jim: I'm gonna do at least 20 interviews to figure out, hey, here's the product concept. Is this something that you would be interested in? Okay. It would be interesting. Okay. Why would you be interested in it? Like you did that exercise on the fly, which I think is just brilliant to validate on the fly and do your r and d and do your buyer journey all at once and to figure out, okay.
[00:29:51] Dr. Jim: Now I know this is the profile of somebody who might buy this product in volume. So let me target, people that fit this criteria. And then I have a niche that [00:30:00] I've built out. That stood out to me because this is the conversations that I have all the time as a sales guy who pretends to know marketing on LinkedIn
[00:30:08] Dr. Jim: You gotta talk to your customers to find out why they buy from you and what process they went through for you to be able to scale your product. The other part that was interesting about you, what you described was you targeted education, you targeted some mar markets, and you specifically mentioned Alaska.
[00:30:24] Dr. Jim: Once you explained it I understood, okay, why does that problem exist? But I'm operating under this this mindset that This is a great product where people are getting kidnapped left and right, and that's, third world country somewhere. Pick one happens all the time.
[00:30:38] Dr. Jim: But that's not really where Kwema and you are primarily playing. There are pockets of that those types of places that you're involved in. But you cited education as a sector that that you're potentially launching into. In pre-show you mentioned healthcare and frontline workers.
[00:30:57] Dr. Jim: Tell us a little bit about how you [00:31:00] landed in those segments,
[00:31:02] Ali Al Jabry: yeah. I think this goes down to where like business acumen meets passion and it was interesting like balancing all of that out, right? Because. , there's so many problems we could solve with our product. Right? And what I was measuring now was the grade of impact our product had. Within which scenarios.
[00:31:21] Ali Al Jabry: So going back to the kidnapping or violence in Mexico, yes, somebody would press the button successfully in a, in the case of an issue. But who would actually help. That was like a question we were not getting positive answers for. People didn't want to like, we're like, yeah, we'll notify the police. And people Mexico were like, can I pay more and not notify the police , right?
[00:31:42] Ali Al Jabry: So we're like, okay, so maybe that's not good. So we have to figure out a better way, security services that were too premium, like private security was too premium for the general public. So we quickly realized that maybe this will be a harder problem to solve than we thought. Not building a community takes time.
[00:31:57] Ali Al Jabry: And then even then Mexico City has 35 [00:32:00] million people. Like how in the heck would we be effective? So it made us question, go back to drawing board and worry about the effectiveness of our product because it's not just about selling and then calling it at night, right? It's about selling.
[00:32:11] Ali Al Jabry: This is where the work begins. So in that journey we got some funding from a group in Pennsylvania and they expected us to be there for a couple meetings. And in that process we got some press. When we got that press, the county reached out to us and said, Hey, We saw you guys on the news. We were actually curious, could we buy like a couple hundred of these bracelets for our social workers?
[00:32:32] Ali Al Jabry: And I was like yeah, sure. Do you wanna meet tomorrow or next week for demo? And they summoned us like on the day they're like, what if you guys come in 30 minutes and give us a demo because we're, we have budget, we wanna close by tomorrow. I was like, what? Okay. Boom. Flew there, give a demo. They liked it like, all right, we wanna involve emergency management to see if they would respond to the alerts.
[00:32:51] Ali Al Jabry: So we had another meeting with emergency management and they were grilling me, made me do a demo like the chief of police, maybe do a demo and they're like, okay, we don't endorse any products. But if Ali [00:33:00] says what Ali said, it does, it actually does. If you, the county wants to buy it, we will support you with the responses for your social workers.
[00:33:07] Ali Al Jabry: So that was a big aha moment. We got a PO in a month from that moment. So that's when I started thinking maybe this employee safety market might be good because there's actually a response protocol that exists and we could tie your product to it, and that becomes an effective product. Then came like the rabbit hole of like, all right, one, are the most indu dangerous industries currently.
[00:33:26] Ali Al Jabry: Obviously we're always sticking over the US because that's probably where the biggest security detail exists. Like when it comes to taking care of employees, how do we improve that? And then it just so happened timing was right because violence just spiked all over the country, right? And yeah. I had, I probably have a thousand or more conversations.
[00:33:45] Ali Al Jabry: I've had a security, HR safety, and I even segmented industries to the point where safety and security are two completely different industries. Most people don't even know that. So I started, that's how much I fell in love with this problem, and I questioned, [00:34:00] okay, so you're an EH HS director, which is environment, health, and safety.
[00:34:03] Ali Al Jabry: What are your biggest challenges? Oh, slip and falls. Oh, heart attacks. Oh, okay. And I was like, all right, that's interesting. So we have this product gonna do this, would it be interesting? And they're like, yeah, it's interesting. But most people won't be like, won't be conscious enough to press the button when something happens.
[00:34:21] Ali Al Jabry: So we were like, huh, okay. So we were getting pushed back. We had a pilot. It didn't work out because we realized that. It's hard to know when you're about to have a stroke, when you're about to faint. So like the facts of you pressing it might be possible, but it's still very unlikely. When we came to meet security, now when I'm saying corporate security, they were eating out of our hands.
[00:34:41] Ali Al Jabry: They were like, wow, this is exactly what we need because we are just focused on physical violence. So our product was so well suited for physical violence that every corporate security leader that I have in an interview, similar to what we're doing right now Hey, I wanna learn from you. You're an X F B I agent, you're an X C I agent, you're an EXE service agent.
[00:34:59] Ali Al Jabry: [00:35:00] Like I am new in the security world. I just wanna learn from your experience and. They just went on and on about their history, their culture, their experience, what they did with the F B I, what they're doing now with the, with their companies that they work for. And I was like, the reason I'm interested is because of this.
[00:35:15] Ali Al Jabry: And they're just like wait. That's what you do. Like I, you, I'm so intrigued. I wanna know more about your product cause I might wanna buy some. I was like, Hey, relax man. Just wanna talk about your experience first, then we'll talk about my products, right?
[00:35:24] Dr. Jim: Ali, I don't mean to cut you off.
[00:35:26] Dr. Jim: I think I'm gonna have you come in and talk to my sales team . Cause se seriously, like I, I have this conversation all the time. Ask a question, let the customer talk. Let 'em tell you all the stuff that's important. Latch onto something that catches your attention. Ask a question about that and why it's important and let them sit in that experience like you're, yeah I'm gonna have you come in as a sales trainer.
[00:35:47] Ali Al Jabry: Happy to do it, man. I love motivating folks, man. And anyhow, so what I was hearing was so like sad, but. Exciting because it's like, wow, we can actually solve safe lives. Like of course I wanna do that, right? Yeah. Like, why would I wanna do that? [00:36:00] So that's how the process went around, and that's how we found out about hospitals being most dangerous workplace in the US right now, 80% of all workplace violence happens in hospitals.
[00:36:09] Ali Al Jabry: So who are the ones that are facing the risk? The people who are under overlooked, right? Like nurses physical trainers, right? Like everybody who works. Not the doctors per se, but mainly the nurses and the frontline workers that don't get to see that, so it made us feel. Full looped because I think there's a static 70% of all nurses are women.
[00:36:28] Ali Al Jabry: So it, it still made us stay true to our core vision of preventing gender-based violence. The difference was like how we were doing it. And then hospitals have pretty elaborate security teams, like security is pretty much all over the hospital. They just didn't know when to help. So most of the times they're just like going to report or like to check in after the fact instead of preventing or deescalating.
[00:36:48] Ali Al Jabry: So we found this really huge sweet spot and that's when the ahha moment for the badge came into play, right? Like we were showing the bracelets to several security leaders and they're like, Hey, people are flaky. If [00:37:00] I have to give 5,000 employees this new bracelet and they have to remember to wear it every day, it's not gonna be successful.
[00:37:06] Ali Al Jabry: I'm sorry to tell you. We tried to do this with so many different things, this didn't work. And I was like, that's a very fair objection. Thank you for your time. And when I was walking out, I saw them, I saw this on their belts and I was like what you guys wear today? And then I saw the reel and I was like, What if you made the real smart, would you be interested?
[00:37:20] Ali Al Jabry: And they're like, Hey, if you can do that, we're pretty interested. So luckily one of our big investments when you're prototyping our hardware product was a Form Labs two printer, which was like pretty expensive, but it can prototype very small plastic. 3D prints very small plastic to the 0.03 micron.
[00:37:36] Ali Al Jabry: So that allowed us to quickly make a sample in a week and a half and shared it. And they're like, okay, cool. When can you have this ready ? So that was a big aha moment. And I was like, all right, we have to apply for a patent because this is a very powerful realization, like human behavior changing it is so hard.
[00:37:52] Ali Al Jabry: So the fact that we can seamlessly add a layer of safety to tens of thousand employees overnight almost . And that's when we found out [00:38:00] state laws and hospital laws required nurses to always wear a badge on them. And more importantly, they always have a badge reel with the logo of their healthcare system on it.
[00:38:08] Ali Al Jabry: So it just became stupid. Like logical. And that's our big takeaway.
[00:38:13] Dr. Jim: There's a lot of interesting stuff about what you just described, but your realization about the badge as the vehicle instead of trying to change human behavior, go with human behavior there's somebody I follow on a regular basis, Josh Braun, and he always talks about, oh yeah, so you, you know where I'm going with this.
[00:38:30] Dr. Jim: It's, don't fight the resistance. Join the resistance. This is all the resistance. Yeah. You're you're talking about, hey, you're getting resistance from the product design, and then you notice something and you ask a question about it, and then because you asked a question and you were curious, That opened the door for some real innovation.
[00:38:49] Dr. Jim: So it's fantastic stuff. So again, I'm gonna have you talk to my sales team . So that's really great stuff. And I think I think it's a great story, but I think one of the things that underpins that [00:39:00] entire description that that you were talking about, that entire experience other than your natural curiosity about how you engage, but you're engaging at a level where you're interested in building a relationship with that person, it almost seems like more than you're interested in selling them something.
[00:39:17] Dr. Jim: Yeah. So where did that come from and how has that served you as a multiple startup founder?
[00:39:25] Ali Al Jabry: So I would say it, the fact that you focus on the relationship. Gives you quality, consistently Quality is what brings results, right? Like you, you don't want to sell to the shiny object person.
[00:39:38] Ali Al Jabry: You wanna work and sell and partner with the person who genuinely understands what you're doing and generally values what you're doing for what it is, and not for it being the next shiny object, right? So the fact that I build relationships, even with people who are never gonna be my customer, was so important because it made me understand what not to do, [00:40:00] what I should double down on, what I should explore more.
[00:40:02] Ali Al Jabry: And that's exactly what my life philosophy is, right? I invest in people all the time, like just learning, just curiosity, not expecting anything in return, just because that's hu that's what humans should do more of. And. There's always some kind of bucket you're filling, right? So maybe it might not be a professional bucket, but it might be a personal bucket, or it might be like a professional budget, a bucket that's personal, right?
[00:40:25] Ali Al Jabry: Doesn't have to be Kwema related. It might be in the future that I save that person's life. How much would that feel? How would I feel knowing that I saved somebody's life because I talked to 'em about a problem they had? So all those different things by asking the right questions matter and it's crazy the kind of stuff that you would face when you talk to somebody who you might think is larger than life and is actually like lonely.
[00:40:46] Ali Al Jabry: You know what I mean? Yeah. So it's, it is been really like fruitful to be able to put humans first and focus around that line to the point where I'm arguing with. Some like executives or leaders [00:41:00] about the safety of nurses. I'm like, Hey, I'm sorry, like your nurses are not safe. I'm sorry. What you're doing is not working.
[00:41:05] Ali Al Jabry: I, by my own means, went on LinkedIn, found a couple of your nurses, I talked to them privately, anonymously, and I asked them how they felt. They were not happy to what's happening right now. So I'm gonna take the bullet, whether you buy our product or work with us to let you know that your nurses are not, don't have peace of mind, are not happy with what they're, with, what you guys are giving right now, I'm giving you the opportunity to be a mediator and be a innovator into adding a layer of safety for your frontline that actually work that seamless and that they actually will feel like the, they're cared about.
[00:41:35] Ali Al Jabry: So I am that person. I have those conversations and I don't mind if we don't do no by our products. I really don. I feel like it's worth it enough for me to fight for the frontline workers who got us through the pandemic, right? Without these nurses and these frontline workers, where would we be?
[00:41:47] Ali Al Jabry: I'm so passionate about it that I don't care about the sale . You know what I mean? Yeah. I'm happy to walk away from the sale as long as they understand that what you're doing is not working. And we're on a wave right now. Like [00:42:00] nurses are coming up publicly on TV saying how much their system does not give a damn about them.
[00:42:05] Ali Al Jabry: So I'm a forefront fighter for their convers for that conversation because somebody has to say it. I'm happy to be that
[00:42:12] Ali Al Jabry: person.
[00:42:13] Dr. Jim: That what you've heard from nurses is consistent from with what you hear from many, frontline employees in general.
[00:42:19] Dr. Jim: Rank and file employees of any stripe from pre pandemic and that accelerated through the pandemic. They often feel that the employers don't really care about their welfare or their benefit or wellbeing, which has led to vast majorities of them leaving the workforce.
[00:42:37] Dr. Jim: So I think you're hitting on something there, but I think the one thing that stood out about all of that relationship focus that you mentioned, it ties in with something that I I talk about with my teams. I always talk about, hey, it's critical for you to build relationships first because if you're interested in making an impact in the world around, your relationships create the ripples [00:43:00] that drive that impact.
[00:43:01] Dr. Jim: Because if you have a ripple over a long enough timeline, that turns into a wave, and it's something that I talk about all the time, is that you need to be the force that creates those ripples and how you impact other people, allows for that change and for that impact to, to become real.
[00:43:17] Dr. Jim: You don't have to drive it by yourself. You can drive it through other people by the relationships that you build. So I connected really well with your description of it. Cause I think we must be like twins or something.
[00:43:27] Dr. Jim: So Ali, a I think if I were to reframe this show as a sales show I don't think many people would notice the difference because there's a lot of fundamental sales concepts that you're talking in terms of startup effectiveness that translate well into the sales world as well.
[00:43:44] Dr. Jim: So it's a really fun conversation that we're having. So we have the origin story of Kwema and, how you came up with the product and all of that sort of stuff. What's next for you as the founder
[00:43:55] Ali Al Jabry: honestly saving lives. Like we, we already had some success cases [00:44:00] like mitigating and deescalating violent situations that could have turned really badly. Shipping. A lot of these bo these boxes out, like they're, they come in very small boxes in like a similar to a donut box and in a bigger donut box with about 112 of these boxes in it.
[00:44:15] Ali Al Jabry: So like the whole experience we designed, it's about that duty of care. That's exactly what employees should feel when a healthcare system gives them this, right? It comes in this box, they get it. It just, Remove their name tag and put it on. And now they have a seamless layer of safety across anywhere, and security teams are very powerful, right?
[00:44:32] Ali Al Jabry: So like we're talking 30, 92nd response. So when they press that button, they know that somebody's counting 30, 90 seconds, right? So it's a hard, it's a hard thing to do consistently, but the demanding it by the number of incidents that happened per month, we're talking 50 in the lower end, 2000 on the higher end, right?
[00:44:51] Ali Al Jabry: It's insane how healthcare systems are getting battered right now, really getting battered. And the frontline workers are the ones that are absorbing all that hit. So for us, it's all about [00:45:00] making an impact. We have a lot of people vouching for us. We are involved, a lot of associations like the I H S, which is it's a national association of hospital security and safety or healthcare security and safety.
[00:45:10] Ali Al Jabry: And we're big volunteers and supporters of that organization because, Unlike other departments, security collaborates. So two competing medical or scientists or pharmaceutical companies would never share secrets, right? But security does, right? So two competing hospital systems will share their security insights to each other because their united fronts, right?
[00:45:32] Ali Al Jabry: So word really explodes and we're our young company making a lot of noise in this industry. Like people love our product we do the hard work, we make a sample, we give it to the security leaders of hospitals and tell them, Hey, you know what? Share it with your directors of nursing. Share it with your nurses.
[00:45:47] Ali Al Jabry: Tell me what they think and then let's talk next week. They come back, it's almost unanimous. Hey, they don't want any other product. They wanted this yesterday. What do we need to do? So it's super key. Understanding the benefit, right? And that's [00:46:00] where. We doubled down on it and now it's just exploring where else do we have to make this benefit reach.
[00:46:06] Ali Al Jabry: And that's why I'm currently in South Korea. I'm in Seoul and in South Korea hospitals are ginormous. We're talking 3000 to 5,000 bed hospitals. Oh wow. Almost 20,000 employees in one airport size hospital. So our product obviously has huge potential here, especially because South Korea is like very Bluetooth and infrastructure ready.
[00:46:28] Ali Al Jabry: Like this is the future world, man. Like I'm mind blown being here for about. Two weeks now, and I've, I'm just losing my mind on how advanced everything is here. Things work like clockwork. Everything is so techy. Like it's really impressive for Seoul being like a 15 million people city. It's at scale seeing it, it's really impressive.
[00:46:47] Ali Al Jabry: So hospitals are, I would say, a bit readier for our product. The US is, but the US needs our product way more than South Korea does. So it's like super interesting to get both sides of the coin and then balancing this business case, [00:47:00] right? So the next couple of years of our business would be definitely scaling to a lot of healthcare systems, both in the US and overseas.
[00:47:07] Ali Al Jabry: And most importantly, seeing. Nurses be more valued, hopefully less nurses. Quit not quitting the PO possess the profession. Because right now there's a huge crisis that's coming our way. Nurses are not renewing their licenses. So we see really long-term effects in the healthcare system in the US just because of our product.
[00:47:27] Ali Al Jabry: Now, it's not just because of our product, because we're talking, tying it into everything else, but we're leveraging the existing infrastructure's already been invested, like deescalation training, like security officers, like cameras, like training in general, right? Like all these different things that have already been invested by not being leveraged to as optimal use.
[00:47:46] Ali Al Jabry: So with our product, we're also allowing that optimal usage to come to light, and that's why we're looking at industry partners that we'll be announcing in the next couple of months. So it's a very exciting time. It's also a very heartbreaking time, to be honest. Like the amount of news that are on my LinkedIn feed [00:48:00] about people getting shot, stabbed, killed, beat up in hospitals, it's unacceptable.
[00:48:05] Dr. Jim: That's phenomenal stuff. And I think there's probably a broader opportunity in elementary and secondary and higher ed as well, because those tend to be soft targets when it comes to violence as well.
[00:48:17] Dr. Jim: So I think there's a product market fit there that, that might solve some problems too. Before we sign off, what are the two or three big takeaways that you want the listeners and viewers to walk away with
[00:48:28] Ali Al Jabry: Biggest takeaway is I invite everyone to fall in love with a problem that adds value to our society. We need help, like a lot of us need help in different ways. And if you could be somebody that solves a problem that is hopefully morally sound, youll have so many double, triple bottom lines to feed off.
[00:48:51] Ali Al Jabry: Like it won't just be the result. The byproduct will be money. Everything else will be even more important. That's the biggest takeaway I'd probably give. Secondly, invest [00:49:00] more in the world. Invest more in cultures. Get to know your, if you haven't left your state, go to a different state. If you haven't left your country, go to a different country.
[00:49:06] Ali Al Jabry: Do a bit of that and try and hang out with locals. Try and feel that invitation when you go to a different culture, right? That is one of the richest things you could have and makes it makes a world a lot smaller. and it really fulfills you because you feel like a human, a global human right, not just a human in one part of the world.
[00:49:24] Dr. Jim: Last thing, where can people find you?
[00:49:26] Ali Al Jabry: Yeah, so people can find me at my email. It's a l ima.co or you can check out our website, which is K W E M a.co. So yeah, I'm happy to keep connected. I'm on LinkedIn
[00:49:39] Dr. Jim: If you can't find 'em on LinkedIn, find me and then I'll connect you.
[00:49:42] Dr. Jim: And and don't be surprised, Ali, if I if I have some other startup founders that that ping you with questions about, Hey, how do I get a product to market and what should I be thinking about? Awesome conversation. I appreciate you spending the time with us and telling us your story. I think it's it's packed with a lot of startup lessons, a lot of sales [00:50:00] lessons, a lot of relationship lessons.
[00:50:01] Dr. Jim: I'm gonna hit you up. Sales training and have you come in . So really solid stuff. I appreciate you spending some time with us. For those of you who have been listening and following us on your favorite pod podcast platforms, go ahead and tell your friends.
[00:50:15] Dr. Jim: You can find us on all your favorite podcast platforms. We're on YouTube. LinkedIn is our primary channel. We're also on TikTok and on Facebook. We're not on Instagram cuz that's for food picks and you can find us everywhere under the cascading leadership handle. So thanks again j for joining us, Ali, and thanks for listening.
[00:50:31] Dr. Jim: Tune in next time for another great episode of Cascading Leadership.
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